Sam Llewllyn sails through Scotland without a propeller SCOTTISH ADVENTURE
Sam Llewellyn relies on wind power and the odd tow as he navigates the sometimes treacherous waters of West Scotland to get him back to his home cruising ground on the West Kyle of Bute.
The propeller fell off in Badachro, off Loch Gairloch, just as my heavy 30-ft ketch Dahlia and I were anchoring. The first indication of its departure was a clunk from the direction of the rudder. The second, more conclusive, was the fact that while the engine was going hard astern, the rocks ahead carried right on approaching. Having sprinted up to the foredeck, let go the anchor, stopped the boat, and reduced my heartbeat to about 120bpm, I started thinking.
The first step was to ring the kindly Rob Adam, Badachro’s nautical Mr Fixit, who showed up in a RIB with a TV camera taped to the end of a roofing batten. The screen showed a shaft, but no propeller. The waters of Badachro are the colour of strong tea thanks to the peaty river that pours into it, so diving was useless. Anyway, even if a propeller could be found there was no chance of refitting it in this beautiful but
remote spot. The boat needed to go south, to her home in Tighnabruaich on the West Kyle of Bute.
There was very little wind, but the forecast was for northwesterlies to arrive. If I could make the first, no-wind part down to Kyle Rhea, the strait which separates Skye from the mainland, the Lord might or might not provide. Then there would be Ardnamurchan, the Sound of Mull, the Crinan Canal, Loch Fyne, the West Kyle of Bute and home: 150 miles, give or take. Dahlia is a sailing boat, after all, I told myself, pushing aside the sensation that I was whistling in the dark. Furthermore she was currently the mothership of three Cornish Shrimpers, companions on our annual flotilla cruise, and the sea was like a mirror. Pausing only to lash one Shrimper on either side, we pulled up the anchor. The Shrimpers engaged forward gear, and on to the broad grey bosom of the sea we motored.
THE FLOTILLA SETS SAIL
The convention of our flotilla cruises, which we have been making for 20-odd years, is that we sail solo every day and meet up for a party every night. Today the party continued all day as we trundled south at 4 knots in our de facto trimaran. The island of Rona passed, a series of blackish humps in the murk to starboard. A helicopter clattered up from the listening post of the submarine range between Rona and the mainland, ignored by a white-tailed sea eagle engaged in a scuff with some seagulls.
The red beaches of Torridon inched by. The tide swooshed us under the Skye Bridge, past the Simon Princess, a ship devoted to delousing farmed salmon by pumping them through pipes full of warm water, and into the narrows of Kyle Rhea, where the GPS read 9 knots. At the bottom of the narrows we turned to port out of the current, waited for the sounder to register 4m, groped for a gear lever to engage astern, remembered there was no astern or ahead either, and dropped the anchor off a placid beach in water of reassuring glassiness. The Shrimpers withdrew.
The next leg of the voyage would be different. Ardnamurchan is the westernmost extremity of the British mainland, and a protuberance that should be approached by the mariner with maximum ingenuity, assuming he has any. The forecast was for northwest Force 4-5 and a bit of 6. I rose at 0500, hauled up full sail, cranked the anchor off the seabed and ghosted away from the sleeping Shrimpers towards the salmon-river whorls of tide issuing from the southern end of Kyle Rhea.
As we left the shelter of the anchorage a shadow came into being under the Skye shore, grew little white teeth and emitted a bracing roar. Dahlia’s deck tilted sharply to port, and the chainplates tore white plumes out of the sea, and the merry crash of crockery from the galley demonstrated that it is wind as well as tide that funnels down Kyle Rhea. I dropped the mainsail and returned to the wheel, sweating in mind and body. Dahlia broad-reached down the Sound of Sleat under jib and mizzen with seven knots on the GPS. Ardnamurchan? No problem.
It could not last. The tide faded under us and the waves took on an unpleasantly glassy look. Up went the mainsail again, and slatted and banged. Point of Sleat came abeam. Far beyond the bow the long grey finger of Ardnamurchan lay over the horizon. My thoughts turned to the inflatable on the afterdeck, and the ancient and untried 5hp Yamaha outboard that had been sitting on the side deck for a while. Even if it started, an alongside tow with the pair of them would be a strictly flat-water business. Here the water was by no means flat, and off Ardnamurchan, where the seabed is said to resemble the Montana Badlands, it would be worse.
SOARING EXHILARATION
Resignation is a great advantage to the propless seafarer. I therefore made another cup of tea, using leaves, not bags, and ignored the slat and bang of the sails. As I finished the second cup I observed that the ripples on the water had taken on a frosted quality. The frosting became a jaggedness and the mainsail filled with a soft whap. All of a sudden we were close-reaching across the blue with the sun beating down. Ardnamurchan was off the port bow, turning from distance-blue to mountain-green. A seal jumped three times clear of the waves down to port and
I knew exactly how it felt. Off Ardnamurchan lighthouse I cracked sheets, doused the mizzen, and at 2000 we reached Tobermory Harbour.
The mainsail filled with a soft whap. All of a sudden we were close-reaching across the blue with the sun beating down
Next morning, heart in mouth, I dropped the dinghy over the side, lashed it on, persuaded the antique Yamaha to start, dropped the mooring and towed Dahlia slowly on to the hammerhead. The forecast was Force 2, and Dahlia is not at her best in anything under Force 3. This meant extra petrol and extra cans from Brown’s, which by pure coincidence sells the greatest range of whiskies in the Western world. I returned to the boat with four gallons of petrol and a couple of bottles of the incomparable Te Bheag, made on Skye and hard to find elsewhere. Then I filled up with water, backed the genoa to get the bow off the pontoon, let go the stern line, sheeted in, and proceeded towards the mouth of the harbour, where there was a clear patch in which to hoist the main.
The first objective was Lochaline, but when we were off the entrance it seemed a pity to waste the wind still funneling powerfully down the Sound of Mull; so on we went. Off Castle Duart the wind failed, but a couple of knots of tide took us on in the general direction of Crinan. There were now ferries, large, purposeful and much too close, and as the evening developed the wind failed completely. We placed the dinghy on the starboard side, and the engine, emitting a noise like a tubercular wasp, propelled Dahlia towards Puilladobhrain.
We were away, slanting up the wind, tack on tack through the wind-over-tide seas
WHISKY TO THE RESCUE
We anchored in the usual throng. The sun set behind a hill, rose again as it rolled out the other side, then set again. At five next morning the Yamaha was hounding us over a mirror calm down the Firth of Lorn and into the powerful tide that rushes down the Sound of Luing, through the Dorus Mor, and into the sea lock at the northern end of the Crinan Canal.
Here we were an object of curiosity. This intensified as the outboard sulked for a while. I enlisted help to warp the boat through the first couple of locks, trudged up to the Crinan Boatyard for a new spark plug, and set off on the nine-mile ordeal by dereliction known as the Canal. The engine coughed, but held out. Kindly staff helped us through the locks. At lunchtime the following day we were sinking down the Ardrishaig sea lock, heading for half-ebb in Loch Fyne.
The Loch Fyne tide was running at about half a knot, and five miles south of the lock the breeze failed completely. I hauled the dinghy alongside, pulled the start cord and put it in gear. It stopped. I repeated
the operation. No result. The sun hammered down. We were stuck, and the tide was turning.
A mile to the south of us a white yacht was motoring south. I blew the ship’s hooter, raved on Channel 16, waved arms and brandished a towline. And joy of joys, the white boat turned towards us, and said they would tow us in for £600, and I said what about a bottle of whisky? They agreed. An hour later we hammered on to the pontoon in the marina at Portavadie, fearsomely glossy pride of the Cowal Peninsula.
The weather changed in the night. A kind man with a RIB and a hangover towed us out of the marina and into plenty of wind. I unrolled some genoa to clear a salmon farm, tore down into a patch of clear water, rolled up the genoa and hauled up the roaring and flogging mizzen. Out came two-thirds of the jib, held aback till the mizzen drew on the port tack. And we were away, slanting up the wind, tack on tack, through the wind-over-tide seas.
Spray was coming aboard in lumps now. Clear the point. Mainsail up. Storm along the land just outside the 15m line, wind falling now, and the red can on Ardlamont Point is there. Mizzen down, plenty of port helm, and we are running north for Tighnabruaich. In the moorings point up, sails flapping, gliding through the other boats. The hand no longer gropes automatically for the gear lever. I stroll forward and pick up the mooring buoy. Home.